


all the rest is rain

by hamiltrashed



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Past Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, Past Relationship(s), Sex, but sometimes rick grimes, everybody wins, god these tags are a mess, how did i even write this, love in the time of apocalypse, mostly the zombies, rick lurves daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-04
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 19:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4072141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamiltrashed/pseuds/hamiltrashed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>each person gets one shining, silver lining in their life, and all the rest is rain. (read: rick finally found something to make this goddamn apocalypse worth living through.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the rest is rain

**Author's Note:**

> trying to break up an incessant case of writer's block. in my head, this was gonna be a dark little piece. instead, it ended up being kinda fluffy, with just the teensiest hint of crack. i don't know what happened. forgive the lack of proper capitals. it seemed like a no-caps necessary kind of fic when i was writing it.

rick is not sure there is much truth in the old adage that every cloud has a silver lining. maybe a fraction of the clouds, sure. a tiny portion of them, where each person gets one shining, silver lining in their life, and all the rest is rain. oh, but _this_ cloud. this one. this is it. he’s sure of it. this one is _his_ silver-lined fucking cloud and it goes by the name of daryl. strange name for a cloud, but there you are.

when rick looks back over his life, there have been clouds, and there have just been ordinary shining moments. never the two together. it was either rain hanging over his head, sheets and sheets of it for weeks without ceasing, or it was clear and cloudless sunny blue skies. carl is one of his blue skies. and lori was, too, once upon a time. but much of the rest was rain. and much of it now is still rain. and daryl is rain, too. but also a silver lining.

daryl dixon is something else. that’s the only useful phrase rick has found to describe him in all the time that he has known him. any time rick has tried to pin him down with other words, daryl has revealed another thing about himself that negates it entirely. so daryl is just _something else_. and he’s rick’s something else. 

before, when rick had tried to make sense of his longing for a something else, something different than the tornado that had become his marriage to lori, it had never had a solid form. but now it does. solid and distinct and so _different_ that rick has had to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about himself. but as it turns out, post-end of the world rick is a lot more open. as he should be. one does not deny themselves the simple pleasure of even just admiring daryl dixon from afar.

but now, it’s more than that. whenever rick touches him, it feels like home. it feels like having never known what you were looking for but finally finding it anyway. it feels like tension, but good tension, because rick thinks that as tightly as daryl is wound, if he snapped because of rick, it would be only in the way that pop rocks do. gentle, but still with enough bite to make a person’s insides feel alive.

it is clear now, that in the moment rick met daryl, he knew. he didn’t know he knew, but somewhere inside, a light came on and remained on, even in all the darkest moments, even when rick felt like ending it all. there are just some lights you don’t snuff out. and it’s this light that has become ever brighter in the months since rick’s sanity first started to slip, like a beacon to lead him home. and here he is, lounging on this cloud, even as death comes at him from every angle. sometimes, you just have to take a moment to relax, even when the world is caving in.

and okay, rick is not _really_ the optimistic type. not anymore. he knows this could all be over in a moment, but if a person can’t at least try to eat their cake while they have it, then what’s the point of it all anyway? and in the end, when rick tells daryl what he’s thinking, feeling, wanting, needing, and daryl responds in kind so enthusiastically that rick can’t help but wonder if this was in the cards all his life, rick raises two middle fingers to the universe because cake has never tasted better. for those playing along at home, the cake is the sex. and also the romance, because rick grimes does not do anything half-assed. and after all, he _does_ love his silver lining.

rick is not optimistic, but god damn, there’s gold in them there hills. rick would swear by it.


End file.
